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Editorial

Counting our blessings

Two holidays are similar in their celebration of the fruits of freedom

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Thursday November 28, 2013 11:03 AM

A community succeeds based on a combination of the dedication of individuals, cooperative effort and a large dose of divine intervention (or luck, as some might call it). This is a basic theme of both Thanksgiving and the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah, both of which — in a very unusual occurrence — are being celebrated today.

A man can build a house, and a collection of like-minded people can build a neighborhood. But both these holidays celebrate the fact that there are greater forces that bind us together with shared values and dedication, which are necessary for a truly exceptional society.

The Pilgrims risked their lives and performed backbreaking work to establish themselves in the vast New World. On Thanksgiving we remember those settlers and the natives feasting together, but also the fact that the Pilgrims dedicated that day nearly 400 years ago to thanking God, without whom they felt they would not have made it. A century and a half after the first Thanksgiving, the Founders would enshrine the values of liberty and equality in the Constitution and Bill of Rights, making America a favored destination for immigrants ever since.

Hanukkah tells the story of Jews in second-century B.C. Jerusalem who fought against attempts to suppress Judaism and convert them to Hellenic practices. Those Jews, known as the Maccabees, defended their beliefs and identity against the much larger military forces of the Seleucid Empire. Central to the story is the miracle of oil, in which one day’s supply of oil provided light for eight days in the Jewish Temple. The Jewish victory over Seleucid forces restored political and religious freedom to the people of Judea.

“Every single person in America — and that’s what makes America so special — has an opportunity to be thankful for, to enjoy, the great blessing of freedom that we can never take for granted,” Chabad Rabbi Areyah Kaltmann told The Dispatch about this year’s intersection of Thanksgiving and Hanukkah.

“Thanksgiving really celebrates not so much America the country, but America the idea,” said Rabbi Mishael Zion, co-director of the Bronfman Fellowships, in an interview with Time magazine. “It’s a place of refuge. It’s also a place of opportunity and mobility and success.”

It’s fitting that it was not an American but a foreigner who is credited with inspiring the term American exceptionalism. Alexis de Toqueville first used the word “exceptional” to describe the United States in the 1830s, 200 years after the first Thanksgiving. Outsiders founded America as the “first new nation,” in the words of political scientist Seymour Martin Lipset, and over the years immigrant rags-to-riches success stories often outstripped those of native-born Americans. Many have moved to the United States from countries with fewer rights and less freedom, making it easier for them to appreciate America’s qualities than those born here, who may take these things for granted.

Thanksgiving is a time to be thankful, of course, and to reflect on those values and qualities that have showered the nation with blessings. Americans have fought forces from within and without for generations to ensure that the nation lives up to its promise, and it will take continued dedication and cooperation to ensure the country remains a land of freedom and opportunity for all.